Retail Therapy...

Today, after I helped mom and dad prime, sand, paint and rip up carpet at their house, I felt like I needed a little retail therapy!  So, I headed over to ROSS to see what fun things I could find.  I usually can find great things at our Ross & TJ MAxx...Ross was closer so he won;)  I was looking for "tchotchkes" for our new Ikea shelf in the dining room (funny story, I say the word tchotchke to Dave a week or two ago, and he had no idea what it meant so I told him, now its part of our daily vocab - LOL)    I like the prices at Ross the best too.  I uncovered tons of fun stuff, but I didn't want to spend too much, I wanted to keep the cost around $20.  So here are my spoils of retail war....

 I loved the look of this little white dish, it's purpose is going to be to hold our loose change that we come home and dump everywhere.  We have something like this up in our room, but you never know where our change is going to be thrown in this house.  We usually like to save it up for a long time and then use it for trips (i.e. our honeymoon, Disney, etc.)  Anyways, I thought this dish was very cool!  The cost: $2.29.

 Whats NYC without an apple?  You know, the BIG Apple?  This one is green, but I like that because it adds some accent to the room - there's enough red going on in here.  I have to clean this one up a little bit, you can see the sticky still on it! Priced nicely at $1.99.

 I loved this blue dish at first sight!  It's not going in our dining room though, it prob will find a home up in our soon to be Mediterranean bathroom.  But I had to have it.  Its so bright and cute.  Cost?  $2.99

 I liked the idea of having a teapot just for decor, a pretty white one and this one was perfect!  I love the details on it.  Cost was $5.99.

 This is my favorite find of all!!!  At first I didn't know if I liked it, but once I put the grass from Michael's ($5 and I actually need a little more..) in it and put it on the shelf - I fell in love with it!  It was the priciest thing at $6.99, which is still not too bad in my book!  Don't you love it?!?  Very modern and New York-y!

 So here is the shelf all dolled up now!  I still need to find something.  I'm dying for a yellow NYC taxi tchotchke on this thing - maybe salt & pepper shakers or a little frame or SOMETHING that has an NYC taxi on it.  All our cubby cubes from Tar-jay are on the bottom 4 shelves, so they are sorta out of sight.

The whole pic up there didnt show my cute little green apple, I had to give it a photo shoot...

The total for today with tax was $20.41 at Ross, and $2.16 at Michael's for the grass bringing my total haul to $22.57 - not bad, eh??  Gotta keep that budget under control:)

Ok, back to my book!  Gotta finish, gotta finish...

Linking up to Delightful Order to show off my shelf!

Welcome home, shelf!

Happy Hump Day!

FINALLY!!!  We got the shelf from IKEA that I wanted so badly.  It wasn't too $$, got it for $129.  I love it!!  It = more storage space, and I like that!  Our dining room is "NYC" as you may know from the house tour , so we keep thinking up ways to "NYC" it more.  I liked the idea of the shelf (over a huge pic, because do have a huge pic right across the room in "London" - it'd be too much BIG art!) because in NYC its all about using the space you have - in those tiny apartments where everything has to flow AND work...this shelf helps us use the space more.  Especially because all our mail and cookbooks were piling up here:

We are moving this white shelf down in the craft room (and Frodo's ugly kitty condo) and replacing it with a much sleeker, nicer "launching" pad set of furniture.  I love what Young House Love has going on in their hallway with their entry table, we want to copy it, you can see a pic of that here.  We like the clean look of this entry ensemble, as well as the little cubes that can be used as extra seating if need be.  I know I know, we have that huge red couch (Clifford) but sometimes we do need the extra seating if we have enough people over (Ravens games, Christmas parties, etc).  Anyways, we want to do something like this for that space.  But on to the shelf...gotta love that IKEA...

 Here is Dave, putting it together - don't worry, I helped too.

 This is a pic of it all put together and me starting to fill it up!!  We can tuck away all our mail in those little cubes, and also art/homework supplies in another, and my coupon stuff and flyers in yet another, we lots of space still for pictures and other decor.

 See my Home Management Binder and my Recipe Binder, tucked into their new home? 

 And I love that I have lots of space for cookbooks too, I have a lot and now I can get even more!

 We are still playing around with what-goes-where and somethings here won't live here permanently, I need to find more NYC-ish things, maybe some art, etc to go on here.  I don't want it to look too cluttered, but I want the use of the space to make sense for us too.  Its going to be all about finding the balance:)

It tones down that red wall too.  The pic sitting on top may not stay there.  I have a project brewing for the top of this shelf, something to add more "oomph" to the space and put more color into the room - its so black and red right now and I want some accent colors going on in here!  Hint: the project involves Modge Podge - good times!!

So that's my shelf that I've been dreaming of for months now, finally sitting in my NYC dining room.  Life is good:)